The Reality of our "Content"

I agree with the original post. I recently decided to go out of my way NOT to fall into the left category with a new character. My old friends and guild mates are quite competitive and power leveling has been favored over enjoying lower level content in the game. I got bored and frustrated with following the "super-leveling" path mostly because I hate dealing with KSers/hackers and grinding at the same few maps over and over feels like a chore... but my friends pressured me to stick to what's fastest and suck it up.

Now I'm playing solo and loving it so far. I'm taking my time so I can experience content at an appropriate level; while it's still fun and there is some element of challenge. The problem that concerns me now is that even following the right-side of your chart with a few PQs in between, leveling still feels too fast. Many people will disagree with that but I find it difficult to "bond" with my character when I fly through the levels. The journey of my character is what makes game play meaningful for me. After spending a few weeks to get to 200 it feels like game over to me. Those 200s become mules for CWKPQ and then I'm onto a new character. If it took longer to get there I don't think it would be so easy to start over. I understand why faster leveling and advancement is appealing to casual players & people that play for damage though...

I do feel like I am being left behind by choosing a slower path. That said, I would be missing out on a whole lot more if I continued to play in a way that isn't fun for me. It would be nice if the game could be "balanced" so that everyone can get what they want out of it. At the end of the day it seems like it's up to individual players to decide how their gaming experience is going to be.

Well said. This is the path I'm taking right now which seems to baffle everyone around me, but eh, I don't expect people to understand why I think that if I've been playing as long as I have I'd rather do everything possible (Training, quests, PQs, bosses, merchanting, events etc.) than to just stay glued to one spot or move to a more efficient area just to stay glued to it for the next x levels. There are times when I'll do whatever I can to level up and grab whatever's closest to the chart to the left but MSEA is pretty nice in that it's really not that easy to get to level 200 unless you have massive amount of connections (I have A LOT to say about the drop rates though; they're the reason why I no longer hunt for entertainment).

Another thing I struggle to understand is the reasoning behind wanting to level up quickly. Sure, I have plans for my Phantom to not slack, but that's mostly because it's critical that I achieve my goal of getting level 70 Honour and the highest critical rate boost and I can go back to doing whatever I like once that's done. You reach level 200 and then...what? Zakum's too easy at that level, Horntail may be out if you're too weak and you can forget CHT and Empress unless you're strong and have connections. And I'd suppose SH means nothing to you since you're already maxed out. Why exhaust yourself of the possibilities to enjoy the game when you might already know this is the reality faced by the average Mapler?

And back to the questline thing. I'm not sure if Victoria has a unified one now but it'd be sweet if every class had their own story and had to help out the town in progressively more interactive ways (Think quests where you're dealing with more than one NPC and what you get depends on how you play it) and if every region had a unified quest line that gives you a neat award at the end, something special that doesn't have to be a strong item but is something you can be proud of. That's why I like the Heroes (Short of Mercedes' quest line, what was that?), it's given me more appreciation of who they are and I can think of them as more than 'OP damage dealers'.